WOYWW #604: Completed advent journal, more diamond painting and a tidy desk!

I hope everyone's having a wonderful holiday period. Christmas 2020 is done and dusted and there are only 30 odd hours left of this topsy turvy year. I surprised myself by completing my advent journal right on time AND tidying my desk as well before ringing in the New Year. Here it is shown for my WOYWW visitors - see, I can do tidy! 

These are the advent journals I made in the past three years - this year's the smallest yet! The last two pages are shown below, along with a short video flip-through: 

Day 23: Silent Night

Day 24: My word for 2021

I've also completed a couple of "diamond painted" mandalas. You might think this sort of "art" doesn't match my otherwise messy style, but the little girl in me wants bling, so I have to let her have it! It's not exactly a creative activity, but so relaxing and rewarding! The first one is a card that will be winging its way to friend soon and the other is a bedside lamp that's already in use! So pretty!

Mandala card

We've had some snow as well! Very little though, which was a bit disappointing. Here's Oreo looking on, trying to figure out what the white stuff was: 

Here he is again on the other side of the room, warming his bum on the radiator. My hub's posing with his Christmas present, an annual subscription to Viz magazine and I even managed to snag the current issue on Ebay - and it arrived just in time for Christmas. Apparently, 89% of their readership is male and 55% university educated! I guess, it's a British thing, which in itself I find funny! 

Wishing everyone a very happy 2021! 

WOYWW #603: Diamond Painting and Advent Journal Week #3

I'm showing you a different work desk today for WOYWW. It's a designated corner of our dining room table - much like it used to be in our old house! I spare you the view of my real work desk - it looks bad - so bad that I am actually ashamed of it, so I'll keep it a secret until I get my act together and tidy up. 

I got these diamond painting card kits in the post on Friday afternoon and by Saturday morning, when I took these photos, I had them completed! It's so addictive! Remember my acrylic pouring adventure last year? It's like that on the addiction level, only much easier to manage physically. Sticking down the tiny little shiny dots is a very relaxing process - everybody who's tried it says how therapeutic it is. So I'm officially addicted (again, for a while at least) - I got myself some larger kits for Christmas - these were just a quick fix, cause I just couldn't wait until Christmas! It's supposed to be a cross between cross-stitch and paint by numbers. Loads of videos on YouTube, if you're interested, just search diamond painting. 

I haven't neglected my Advent Journal either! I fell behind a few days but managed to catch up. All up-to-date now - just waiting for today's prompt to be announced. Two more days to go! Here are pages 15-22:

Day 15: Contemplation

Day 16: Things that tickle

Day 17: Human touch

Day 18: Reminisce

Day 19: Festive

Day 20: Things that touch your heart

Day 21: Letting go

Day 22: Where would you like to be?

Visually, my favourite is Day 18 (Reminisce) - I think that came out quite well - but I really put my heart into Day 20. That page is dedicated to the memory of Hatchiko, a Japanese dog who's waited for his dead owner to return for 9 years at a train station! True story! 

My advent journal is really chunky now. I took a side view to show you - I'll need a ribbon to close it!  

So that's it for today! I hope your Christmas preparations are going well. I'll have to pop into town to do some socially distanced last minute shopping so I might be late visiting, but I'll be back soon. Stay safe everyone and Merry Christmas! See you again next week! xx

WOYWW #602: Advent Journal week#2

The days always go by so quickly before Christmas! One minute it's summer and now we're in the middle of winter - well, technically, winter still hasn't begun yet, but you know what I mean! My advent calendar tells me it's only 8 more days 'till Christmas and that's frightening and exciting in equal measure. I managed to get around to doing some Christmas shopping this week after realising that we had nothing to put under the tree! I even thought about wrapping up some fake presents LOL! I've got a nice little bundle now all wrapped and perhaps I'll buy a few more small things and we're all set. 

I know this sounds sad but I buy my own presents as well - but hey, at least I get what I want! One of the things I wanted was a typewriter! I can't put it under the tree though as I'm already using it. I've found the perfect spot for it in my office - I can just roll my chair to use it. My husband thinks I'm mad for buying an old typewriter, but there's actually a big revival going on people using typewriters for all sorts of purposes and nostalgic reasons. Apparently, Tom Hanks is a big fan - he's got a huge collection. Mine's a 1970's Olympia AEG Traveller de Luxe S - nice and compact and in perfect working order - it just needs a new ribbon. 

The main advantage of using a typewriter - for me anyway - is to be able to type on all sorts of surfaces that it would be difficult to print on eg, tissue paper, tea bags, old book paper, post-it notes, napkins, gelli prints, etc. The text is much easier to position in the right spot as well and of course you can't beat that authentic, imperfect typewritten look (complete with typos!) with a computer printout. I've used it several times on my Advent Journal pages already (as you'll see from day 10, which was the day I got it!). 

Day 9: Favourite song

Day 10: The power of love

Day 11: Evening lights (typo *radiant*)

Day 12: Who am I?

Day 13: Be brave

Day 14: Friends & Family

I didn't have time to complete yesterday's prompt (Contemplation) but I can show you the beginnings of my background sitting on my desk this morning. I'm thinking of using that angel die-cut for the focal image - we'll see...

I've received two lovely Christmas cards in the post - from LLJ and Shaz. I've studied them in minute detail so that one day I'll be able to make pretty cards too. My first challenge would be to tidy up the sticky mess on my desk - it's becoming a problem even for me! I love the fine, delicate lines and watercolour textures in LLJ's card and the expertly blended background and sparkly glitter in Shaz's! Notice how the green they both used is the exact same tone! Thank you so much ladies - your thoughtfulness is very touching (although LLJ was playing it down saying she was just foisting her cards on poor unsuspecting deskers LOL!) 

I hope I didn't keep you too long with my ramblings. Happy #602 and Happy Christmas preparations! xx

WOYWW #601: Post-Crop and Advent Journal week#1

First of all, I'd like to say how wonderful it was to see so many of you (and your pets!) at the virtual crop! It did feel a bit like we were in the same room, although perhaps slightly chaotic at times! Here are some screenshots I took, in lieu of a group photo. The morning session followed by two screens of the afternoon session - and Julia was worried she would be sitting there all by herself LOL! Apologies for Oreo being so anti-social - although he did make a very short appearance during the morning session! He spent the rest of the day asleep and I would not dare wake him! 

It was fun and I made a load of gelli prints while listening to the chatter! Here are some of them just to prove that I wasn't completely idle! 

I've already used some of these prints in my Advent Journal, as you'll see. I've managed to keep on track completing each page as the prompts were released this past week. This was my desk last night while working on yesterday's prompt. You can see how small my journal is - it's much easier and quicker to work on a small scale for daily prompts! 

My pages from December 2 - December 8 are below. I think day 7 is my favourite (a winter walk) which just fell together but I had fun working on all of them.

And now for some enabling! I've recently bought some second hand mixed media books - they are all so exciting and inspiring - seriously they make my heart beat faster! They are quite old (from around 10 years ago), but I like them more than some of the new releases and they are much cheaper second hand as well. I think one of them was under £5 delivered!

Now that Christmas decs are officially allowed, we dug up this ice palace from a few years ago - we couldn't use it last year as we didn't have a transformer and it was eating up the batteries like there was no tomorrow, but this year we found the perfect spot for it in the window connected to the mains. It looks so pretty lit up at night. I think we got it from Home Bargains when we first moved in - it would have been a shame to keep it in the attic. 

Happy #601 and Happy Wednesday! xx

WOYWW #600: Advent projects and more!

So here it is, the big six-oh-oh! 600 weeks of sharing messy desks on WOYWW - I've been part of about  half of them - on and off - according my estimates but I have no way of knowing exactly. I first stumbled upon WOYWW back in 2014 and it had already been going on for a number of years by then! In fact, I think it was in its heyday back then with around 100 people linking up. These days it's around 30 regulars, which makes it more manageable to visit everyone. What is the secret of the longevity of WOYWW? The undying devotion of our lovely hostess Julia and her second-in-command Jan, who always keep us deskers motivated and engaged. It's a kind of addiction, really! So here I am yet again sharing my creative space: 

Now, I did say that I was going to tidy up for #600 - which I did! - but then I messed it up again. If you compare this shot with last week's, you'll see that it's a different kind of mess entirely! This was taken on Monday while I was working on my perpetual calendar to get it ready for December 1st ready for the Christmas countdown. And tada! 

It goes with my little advent journal that I created around the same time to take part in #artjournaladvent2020 on Instagram. It's co-hosted by Michelle, who used to be on WOYWW! Here's my journal and the first page I managed to complete last night. Each day a new prompt will be released. 

I've also done a spread in my bigger journal. I used some waxed elements that I had experimented with the previous weekend, which produced some pretty cool effects:

I've also signed up for a surface design course because I always wanted to find out how the professionals work, so that will keep me busy for a while. Remember those little houses I showed you a couple of weeks ago?  I've turned them into a pattern and used it make this parallax mock-up of a cushion! Bellow that is what it would look like on a mug. Only playing though, I have no intention of doing this professionally. I always just have to know how things are done - and once I do, I move onto something else even more intriguing! Jack of all trades and all that. 

Happy Advent, happy #600 and hope to see many of you at the crop this weekend! xx